Users of cellular telephone networks often desire to send documents, including video clips, music and the like, to other telephone users and/or to users not on a cellular telephone, such as users who are connected via the Internet. Multimedia messaging service (MMS) is designed for such users and takes advantage of the cellular network.
One problem with current MMS systems is that they require a sender to take physical custody of the message, i.e., store the message in the sender's communicating device. Since multi-media messages are typically large files which typically consume a relatively large amount of bandwidth in their transmission and which often take an appreciably long time to deliver, the aforementioned message custody requirement results in various disadvantages.
For example, the sender must have a method of first obtaining content. In some situations, the content can be delivered from a third person or entity, such as a broadcast or advertisement. However, in some situations the user will desire to create his or her own message, usually with video or other multi-media information content. Under existing systems this is difficult to achieve, and typically is accomplished by down loading content from a stored file, changing the content and/or adding content, and then re-transmitting the content as a message to the recipient. A user may be limited in the content which can be used to create a message due to user device storage limitations. Additionally, creation of a message may be difficult and time consuming, due to the requirement of acquiring all portions of the message locally.
Compounding the problem even further is the fact that many users wish to retransmit the message to one or more other users at a different telephones. Thus, this same large message must again be transmitted through the cellular network. Accordingly, even when a user does not desire to create a new message, but rather merely wishes to provide interesting content to a friend, the transmitting user must both obtain the message for storage in the sender's communicating device and transmit the message through the network to the friend, thus being faced with the time it takes to transmit the file through the network twice (or more depending upon the number of recipients). It can readily be appreciated that the present multi-media messaging service is not efficient with respect to bandwidth usage or time.
Another currently existing problem is that the cellular network serves primarily mobile users while the Internet or other data networks primarily serve users who are fixed in space, and thus the user devices and their capabilities are different as well as the situations in which the user devices may be available and utilized are different. Even wireless local area networks (WLANs) are typically fixed in location and serve high density areas (also referred to herein as hot spots), such as airports, coffee-shops, hotels, and the like, and cover only a relatively small geographical area. Data networks, such as the Internet and WLANs, and cellular networks function as substantially separate networks and are not very directly related or conveniently connected to each other. Although some interconnectivity has been provided in the past, the interface is typically very limited in its application and fails to take advantage of different resources available to the devices of each type of network.